How Obama Allies Are Defining Romney

Robert Draper’s New York Times Magazine story about Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super-PAC, is the most interesting political story of the week. One takeaway from Draper’s story is that Priorities USA really does have a big role in the campaign. The tepid pace of the recovery suggests that Obama can’t run on a “look what we did” platform. He can only persuade Americans that Mitt Romney won’t make things better.
And here Priorities USA has a central role. Most voters have well-defined opinions about Obama. Romney is the variable here. And undecided voters have almost no opinion about him whatsoever:

While conducting a different focus group — this one with non-college-educated Milwaukee voters on the eve of Wisconsin’s April 3 primary — Burton and Sweeney were surprised to learn that even after Romney had spent months campaigning, many in the group could not recognize his face, much less characterize his positions.

In the same passage, Draper explains that Burton and Sweeney couldn’t effectively sell voters on Romney’s support of the Ryan plan, since cutting Medicare in order to clear budgetary headroom for tax cuts for the rich, while an accurate description of the Ryan plan, struck those voters as so cartoonishly evil that they found the charge implausible. (“he respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”)............." (see link below)